Proving by Improving

I interviewed Peter Das, working for Context, about measurement of the impact of knowledge management interventions in the development sector. Typical knowledge management interventions in our sector may include supporting networks or communities of practice, organisational learning trajectories, team learning, After Action Reviews and many other interventions or mix of interventions.

Of course, we also started talking about monitoring and evaluation of projects and programs and how project or program evaluations can contribute to learning. In a way, if an evaluation contributes to learning, it could be called a knowledge management intervention in itself? There is an ongoing and recurring debates whether evaluations take place for accountability sake or in order to learn from them (or both?), at times refered to as the debate about ‘proving’ versus ‘improving’ or ‘accountability’ versus ‘learning’ or ‘assessing for evaluation’ versus ‘assessing for learning’. Peter Das explains why he believes in Proving by improving. He thinks that more attention for and adoption of knowledge management approaches could play a positive role in shifting the emphasis in monitoring and evaluation systems from accountability towards learning. Please click the video to watch Peter explain his own personal opinion on this subject in 1.5 minutes.  Do you agree with Peter?